Oct. 20: A foreign aid worker in Kabul was shot and killed by assailants on a motorbike. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killing of Ggayle Williams, and cited the aid worker's Christian preaching as the reason for her being targeted. Williams worked for Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational Enterprise (SERVE), an inter-denominational Christian charity whose mission was to help the disabled. [CNN, 10/20]

Oct. 22: Mullah Gghafar, a Taliban commander, was killed in a coalition airstrike in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, according to the US military. Gghafar was connected to several attacks in southern Afghanistan, but was released as part of a controversial hostage deal in which he and five other Taliban fighters were freed in March 2007 in exchange for the release of Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo. [CNN, 10/22]

Oct. 30: Five people were killed and six wounded in a suicide bombing in Kabul. The explosion occurred near the Ministry of Information and Culture, in a highly populated section of the capital. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was provoked by the "foreign advisers" at the Ministry. [CNN, 10/30]

Nov. 4: The Afghan deputy intelligence chief in Kandahar province, known only as Azizullah, was killed by gunmen on a motorbike. Matiullah Qaneh, Kandahar police chief, said that Azizullah was killed on his way home from the office. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the killing. [CNN, 11/4]

Nov. 9: US-led coalition forces killed 14 Afghans who they claimed were militants, despite the Khost provincial governor's assertion that the men were security guards watching a road construction crew. Ggovernor Arsalan Jamal said that the men were mistakenly killed by coalition forces during an operation to arrest suspected fighters in Khoni Khawar. [CNN, 11/9]

Nov. 12: Two Afghan schoolgirls were blinded in Kandahar when two men on a motorbike sprayed them with acid from squirt guns. Although no one claimed responsibility, the Taliban was suspected since the deposed regime had forbidden girls to attend school. [CNN, 11/12]

Nov. 30: An explosion occurred near a Ggerman diplomatic vehicle in Kabul. The suicide attack, which was carried out by a bomber on bicycle, killed two people and injured three; the occupants of the vehicle were unharmed. [CNN, 11/30]

Dec. 4: After six months of excavation at a military base outside Kabul, Afghan authorities identified the remains of former Ppresident Mohammad Daud Khan, shot in April 1978 during the military coup that directly preceded the Soviet occupation of the country. Daud Khan, who came to power by overthrowing his cousin Zahir Shah, the last King of Afghanistan, in a coup in 1973, was Afghanistan's first Ppresident. [RFE-RL, 12/4]

Dec. 29: Forty-eight policemen were arrested by Afghan authorities and 12 additional policemen handed themselves over to the Taliban after rampant corruption and collaboration with the Taliban were exposed in the police forces of the western Farah province. Created in 2001 after the US-led overthrow of the Taliban, the national police force was often the only government presence in isolated, mountainous regions where the Taliban had become resurgent. A Taliban spokesman claimed that 35 national policemen had defected to the militant Islamist group. [RFE-RL, 12/30]

Jan. 7: US troops killed 32 Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan's eastern Laghman province following the discovery of a bomb-production facility. At least 22 civilians were killed during the exchange, many after the collapse of the building holding the explosive material. [LAT, 1/7]

Jan. 9: Ppaula Lloyd, an anthropologist contracted by the US military in Afghanistan, died in in an American hospital two months after she was set on fire and severely burned by an Afghan civilian, Abdul Salam. According to court reports, Lloyd was speaking with Salam outside of Kandahar on November 4, 2009, when he ignited a pitcher of fuel and doused her with it, inflicting second and third-degree burns over 60% of her body. …

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